


into the light (my love will be your armor)

by nightbloods



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Christmas fic, F/M, Gen, Kinda, olicity angst with some heavy queen sibling bonding, post 4.09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5526068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloods/pseuds/nightbloods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there is blood on his mother's ring. // post 4.09</p>
            </blockquote>





	into the light (my love will be your armor)

**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know what this is?? it started with oliver and felicity, then i just kept sticking thea in there because my baby. it's piecey, but hopefully this made it into a coherent whole!
> 
> (disclaimer; i don't know much about Hanukkah. i tried not to go into specifics so as not to step on anyone's toes, but if there is anything that needs fixing on that front just let me know)

_"i wore your_  
_armor just to feel deathless._  
_i wore your armor just to know_  
_what it meant to be inside of you._  
_i will dream of kissing your ankles again,_  
_of pulling the weeping arrow out of you_  
_and cutting through the earth_

 _so that we may walk among it."  
_ **-"patroclus to achilles",[caitlyn siehl](alonesomes.tumblr.com)**

 

there's a lot that he doesn't remember. he doesn't remember calling for help, or the ambulance skidding to a stop beside the battered limo. he doesn't remember the strangled noise that fought its way out of him, sneaked up his throat and got caught somewhere in the middle, emerging as something weaker than it should have been: something broken.

he'd rather forget how it felt to have her body lifted away from his, cold air boring a hole straight through him where her blood glued his shirt to his skin. she was supposed to be safe with him. that was his promise, when he dragged her into all of this: he would protect her. all the strange hands on her body feel wrong, and some feral part of him wants to cling to her unconscious frame. hide her away from the world and make good on his promise to take care of her himself. his hands set themselves into motion, but a bigger part of him is aware enough to know that he can't help her right now. uncoordinated fingers wrap around her limp hand and squeeze as tights as he can manage, until somewhere in the haze he hears an unfamiliar voice telling him to _please, mister queen, let go so that we can save her._

red and blue reflected off the shattered glass that had tumbled out of the backseat with her, and it looked almost like fireworks. a hand found its way to oliver's shoulder and he doesn't know how long john stood there before the weight of it registered in oliver's senses, and he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. someone else pulls on his arm and oliver is loaded into the back of the ambulance just before the doors slam closed. another pair of strange hands push him into a seat towards the back, and there are too many people around felicity for him to get any closer. so he watches, finds a gap in the middle of all the frantic bodies and trains his eyes on the shallow rhythm of her breathing.

oliver queen had never been a praying man; not before the gambit went down, and certainly not after. maybe felicity was never much for it either, but she believed in something. watching her fight for every breath and heartbeat, he hoped that whatever god she believed in was a kind one. oliver was never a religious man, but in that moment he would've hit his knees if he could; pleading with anyone who would listen.

_don't take her yet. i know i don't deserve her, but please, god, don't take her yet._

\----

 

when they get to the hospital, he misses the ambulance almost immediately. felicity is whisked out of his sight before he can react. there is a physical pain that comes with her being out of his sight, an ache deep in his chest that feels like emptiness; an abyss he wants to disappear into.

a nurse directs him to an area where a few others are waiting to check up on him and he is vaguely aware of the weeping cut on his neck. ignoring her, he stumbles back towards the entrance instead. old habits die hard, and oliver queen is a runner through to his bones.

he's not sure where he ends up, but something angry and familiar bubbles up in him and there is a hole in the dry wall before he realizes anything. it doesn't feel good, nothing does, but it feels like _something_ , so he hits it again, and again, until his knuckles are bloody and the room stops spinning so much.

thea finds him in that same spot some time later, a crumpled, bloody heap with his head in his hands, folded in on himself. she wastes no time dropping to her knees beside him and pulling him into an embrace. brother and sister, blood to blood, he clings to her like she did when she was little and he was her only hero.

"she can't be gone," he says, voice strained and thick.

thea squares her jaw, defiant as ever. "she's not, ollie," there is a lilt of uncertainty in her tone, but the youngest queen doesn't falter. "felicity will be fine, she's too tough to let this take her down."

oliver lets out a breath through his teeth. he almost believes her.

 

\---

 

felicity's heart stops in the operating room. oliver's knees buckle when they tell him, all smooth tones and clinical terms like her life could be nothing but collateral damage. like his ability to breathe isn't entirely tethered to her body's capacity to house her. he thinks he might be sick. thea laces her fingers with his and oliver focuses over the roar of blood in his ears, enough to catch a few words.

_bullet. missed lungs. bleeding. lucky. stabilized._

"when can i see her?" the words tumble out before the other man can even finish speaking, but the doctor barely blinks.

"you must be the boyfriend, mister queen" he says, all formality when he realizes he's talking to star city's next mayor. oliver's mouth opens to correct him- _she's my fiancee_ \- but the word never quite makes it. he has been dying to say it for months, loved the sound of it even more than he loved calling her his girlfriend. but none of this is right, and he can't bring himself to form the words. not here, not now.

donna steps forward before he can react, stating that they're all family. the doctor falters, but doesn't object. "we've moved miss smoak to a private room," he says coolly, and the group gives a collective sigh of relief that at least she's not in the ICU. they're told her room number, and oliver resists asking any questions about when she'll wake up.

"it's touch and go, cases like these," the doctor says before he walks away. "if she can make it through the night, the outlook is good." he man adusts his pristine white coat, giving them all a serious look. oliver's breath catches, remembering all over again who they're talking about, why felicity is here instead of home with him, celebrating.

someone takes his hand, and he looks down to see bright pink nails wrapped around his clenched fist.

"she's tough," donna says resolutely, eyes all defiance and love, a look that felicity obviously inherited. oliver gives a stiff nod, trying to ignore the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

 

\----

 

she's still stable when the sun comes up. he listened to her heartbeat ringing out on the monitor for hours, palm pressed against the pulse point in her wrist so that there can be no doubt. her heartbeat is steady; she is alive and warm beside him. he matches his breaths to the shallow rise and fall of her chest until he is lightheaded and dizzy.

the sun peeking through the dull hospital room curtains feels like a milestone. it's a grey morning, cloudy and nothing special, but it's a victory.

he thinks about the menorah back home on their kitchen table, thinks about watching felicity light it the past three nights. he didn't quite understand the reverence she held towards it, how lighting a candle could be such an intimate act. but the candlelight made her seem ethereal as he watched her whisper the quiet blessings that first night, quoting by memory alone, and it crossed his mind that she is the closest he's ever come to religion.

he thinks about the chapel just a few halls over, wonders if there would be a menorah there. he thinks about lighting it for her, but it feels too personal. and then he thinks about leaving her here, and letting go of her hand for even a few minutes seems impossible.

silently, with eyes squeezed shut and her pulse beating out a slow rhythm against his skin, he calls out to her god again.

he wants to curl up at her feet, wrap himself around her like an armor; like any graceless, war-torn part of him could ever be stronger than any part of her. he wants to make promises that have already been broken. he wants to whisper them into the bends of her knees, her ankles. he wants to lay down everything he is at the temple between her fingers; nestle his soul beside the silver band on her left hand and hide his heart inside her knuckles.

there is blood on his mother's ring.

 

\---

 

oliver is dozing, forehead pressed against his hand where it's tangled with felicity's, when the door opens and startles him awake. donna is asleep on a cot on the other side of the bed, but doesn't seem to register the movement. thea doesn't make a sound as she steps into the room, drops a duffel bag near his feet and shoves a cup of coffee towards him.

"figured you could use it," she shrugs. "hospital coffee is always awful," her voice is even quieter for the last part, like maybe if she doesn't say it out loud she won't have to think about the reason they're here. when he doesn't reach for it, the cup is left on the end table with the flowers that had already started piling up.

she pulls the only other chair in the room to sit parallel beside his, right up to the bed, and rests her hand on his knee. oliver has enough presence of mind to lay his palm over hers, calloused hand completely engulfing her smaller one. he tries not to think about a time just a few months before when his sister had been the one fighting for breath in front of him.

he's getting really sick of this trend; death playing chicken with the people he loves.

they sit in silence for a while: listen to the monitors beeping and felicity's labored breathing, interrupted here and there by donna mumbling random sentence fragments in her sleep; yet another trait felicity inherited. thea turns her palm into his at some point and tangles their fingers together. there are things she wants to say and oliver knows it, but she settles for quiet support and he's grateful for it.

donna wakes up after a while and leaves to go back to the apartment for a shower, she presses a hard kiss to her daughter's head before giving oliver a small smile, promising to be back in a few hours.

thea takes it as her queue to start talking, still all hushed tones like she's worried about waking felicity. it makes oliver want to scream until his voice gives out, until the windows shake and she wakes up like the happy ending to some twisted fairytale. thea nudges the duffel bag on the floor with the toe of her sneaker, pushing it into his leg.

"change your clothes, ollie. it's no good for you to be sitting here covered in blood." she doesn't say _felicity's blood_. she doesn't mention how the stains are never going to come out.

oliver pretends to not hear her, but he's exhausted and thea is stubborn as ever. he lets go of felicity's hand for the first time since he was allowed in the room with her and carries the small duffel with him into the bathroom. thea takes up his vigil at felicity's side, holding her hand a little awkwardly, but thea queen only knows how to love fiercely, and felicity has been no exception. she's talking to felicity when oliver closes the door separating them, small whispers that he doesn't try to decipher.

the reflection in the mirror startles him: eyes and body ragged, beard bordering on unruly, red stains all across the front of his shirt. the gash on his neck has stopped weeping over the course of the night, but the blood has slipped under his collar and dried there. he doesn't remember when he lost his jacket, or even noticing the tears in his pants where his knees impacted the glass and pavement.

everyone talks about how blood stains clothing, but no one ever really warns you about how it can stain skin, too. oliver peels away his shirt, willing his hands to stay steady as he tosses it in the trash bin. pink watercolor skin greets him when he glances back at the mirror; he doesn't bother trying to scrub it away.

he should be home, in bed still. fuschia lipstick all over his chest instead of these bruises and scrapes.

thea was obviously concerned about comfort more than anything when she packed his bag: a pair of sweatpants that had barely seen any use since all the lazy days in ivytown, and a grey knit pullover that felicity wore more the he did. the sleeves and hems are frayed and threadbare, worn down by his hands or hers. it smells like a mix of her perfume and his body wash and it drowns out the sterile hospital smell when he tugs it over his head, wanting more than anything to wake up and this all have been just a bad dream.

he rolls up the sleeves of the sweater, tries not to think about all the times felicity has asked him to do the same for her. it's hard not to think that she may never do that again, but he makes his best effort.

 

\---

 

thea spends most of her time here since felicity was admitted. she drives donna back to the apartment at night, and she's back first thing in the morning. everyone else has come by once or twice a day; john brought sara and lyla for a while, plopping the little girl down in oliver's lap in attempt to drag his attention away from monitoring felicity's pulse.

ray visited the first day, head down and wearing dark sunglasses like something out of a bad movie; dead men don't visit their ex girlfriends. there was no tension in the air when oliver met the other man's eyes, any ill will ever held towards each other getting tangled up and lost in the maze of wires and gauze, blown to pieces by felicity's shallow breath. ray had placed a hand on oliver's shoulder and started counting felicity's breaths the same way oliver was counting her heartbeats, until the afternoon round of nurses came back and he ducked out the door.

it seems like everyone they know has been by; captain lance, alex, curtis, barry and his team, volunteers from the campaign office. laurel spent several hours drifting between donna and oliver, bringing word from sara the next day.

felicity is the heart of them all; when she falls, they all feel it.

 

\---

 

"are you okay, ollie?" thea's voice is soft, hand familiar on his knee; it's a question he's heard a hundred times over the past three days. he still doesn't have an answer, not one that doesn't involve words like hopeless and drowning and scared and empty.

"the last time i was in a hospital, you were the one lying there." oliver says to thea instead of answering her question. his voice is rough with exhaustion, with the lack of self care in general.

thea winces, she still doesn't totally remember everything that happened. she's caught pieces of the story over the months, but no one had to tell her about the fear in oliver when he found her that night. she squeezes his knee, maybe in an attempt at comfort, maybe as a quiet apology.

"i don't remember much from all that mess," she says, words tumbling out quick and awkward like her mouth doesn't know what to do with them, what to call everything that happened to her. "but on the jet going home, felicity kept checking in on me. she sat with me for hours, and i was still confused and didn't know what was going on, she was a complete stranger to me. i asked her why she was looking after me, i wasn't her family or even her friend," thea  pauses, looking up at felicity in the bed in front of her. "she said that someone had to take care of me, and with your ass off playing ninja, it was up to her."

oliver sputtered out a laugh, smile on his face mirrored by thea's. it's hard to remember how much fire and life lives in felicity when she's so still in front of them.

"i'm tired of losing people, speedy," oliver says quietly after a few sobering minutes.

"you won't lose her," thea pats his knee and wonders when the roles shifted and she became the one he leaned on. "you didn't lose me, and you won't lose her."

 

\---

 

after five days, oliver gets antsy. his mind catches up to his body- or maybe it's the other way around- and when he wakes that morning, he can't sit still anymore. he kisses felicity's temple, promises to be back soon, and then he's out the door.

outside, away from the hospital smell and the sympathetic nurses, it's easier to pretend that she's okay, that she's just taking a day off and waiting for him at home. as far as lies go, it's a pretty one.

unsurpringly, he finds himself at the foundry. he pours over every file and record and random piece of information they have on darhk. laurel and john watching over his shoulder like they're afraid he's going to fall to pieces in front of him; if they're all being honest, it's not such an absurd concern.

there is nothing new. nothing to tell them where to find darhk or how to beat him, no rhyme or reason to his destruction, no weakness to exploit or leverage to be found.

it's fucking hilarious, how they need felicity's help taking down the man that put her in that goddamned hospital room.

oliver barely resists the urge to smash every single one of the monitors in the room, bust all the computers into tiny little pieces until they look like how he feels. he resists because of how pissed felicity would be when- _not if_ -  she woke up and found out he'd obliterated the space she'd crafted so carefully for herself.

the punching bag takes the brunt of his frustration, everything that's been building up for five days now. he stays until john and laurel give up and leave him there, until he gets dizzy and his arms feel like lead, until the bag is stained with blood from his knuckles. in his head, oliver can hear felicity chiding him for not wrapping his hands, and he wants nothing more than to go home and let her rub the stress out from between his fingers.

he stumbles back to the hospital in the middle of the night and the nurses look at him like they're wondering if they should admit him or call security. thea is still in felicity's room standing guard, completely asleep. oliver moves his sister to the cot still in the room from when donna used it, and wraps her in an extra blanket from the foot of felicity's bed.

he takes back his post beside his fiancee, hand wrapped around hers, counting out the time between her heartbeats.

he's exhausted, and he feels like crying; like breaking.

so he does.

 

\---

 

on day eight, oliver decides he's going to put an arrow through the next person that tells him it's just her body's way of healing; shutting down like this.

 _you don't know her like i do_ , he wants to say.

_she's never been quiet for this long._

 

\---

 

when felicity wakes up, oliver is asleep. she runs a clumsy hand through his hair and he thinks it's just a vivid dream, leans into her touch like a reflex.

when he wakes enough to notice her eyes open, it sends his heart pounding. he cries, stumbles out of his chair and onto his knees trying to get to her, forgets to call a nurse, remembers what it feels like to breathe. maybe she'd watched him for hours before he woke up.

when she speaks, her voice is rasped and dry and oliver knows he should tell her not to try talking too much but god, she looks so much more like herself when her mouth is moving.

when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. the words get stuck in his throat, too big and weighted down to make it out into the air; _i love you, i missed you, being without you felt like forgetting to breathe, i'm sorry._

felicity nods, hearing the words without needing them to be said. she pulls him across the bed and oliver whispers it all against her lips, the slope of her nose, into the bend of her neck and the skin of her shoulder. her body hums through the painkillers, oliver's tears falling down onto her skin too fast for her clumsy fingers can catch them all.

he buries his face against her neck and she doesn't smell like her conditioner or his cologne but she feels warm and her chest is rising and falling and she's alive and awake; that's all that counts.

**Author's Note:**

> i'd love to know what you thought xx


End file.
